Massachusetts Republican Mitt Romney said in Ankeny this morning he’s not sure yet if he’ll be in Ames for the Iowa straw poll in August.

But after he officially announces his bid for the White House next week during an event in New Hampshire, he said he will talk about it with his strategy team. The straw poll is considered an test of campaign strength and popularity and is less than 80 days away.

Questions have circulated for months about whether Romney would wage an Iowa campaign given the dominance of religious conservatives among caucusgoers here and his second-place finish to evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee in the 2008 caucuses.

Romney, a former governor and business executive, said during his first Iowa stop this year that he’s not sure where he will devote financial resources or time yet, “but I’m here and i hope that I will be able to build on the good will from a number of my friends from the last time around and hopefully add some new friends.”

Romney, the frontrunner in national polls, doesn’t intend to spend as much money in Iowa as he did during an all-out offensive four years ago. In 2007, he opened his Iowa headquarters in April and had visited Iowa 11 times by late May.

For his 2012 effort, he’ll instead run what his strategists call a leaner effort that relies more heavily on volunteers than paid staff and consultants.

“These are lean times. We’ve got a more lean campaign,” Romney said this morning to about 20 reporters in the parking lot of AgVision Agriculture Software, an agribusiness technology company in Ankeny. “I’ll take my message to the people of Iowa the best way I can.”

Romney said he’s fully committed to Iowa and to the caucus process here but as to the tactics of his campaign, “that’s something which we’ll leave for the future.” He said he’ll be back in Iowa “a number of times before the contest is complete.”

Asked by reporters about Medicare, he answered the he wants Medicare to survive for younger people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and early 50s “and Paul Ryan lays out a plan to do just that.”

He added that while he appreciates what Ryan, chairman of the U.S. House budget committee, has done, but “I’m going to have my own plan.”

Romney’s first stop today was to meet owners Jose Laracuente, his wife Shelley and a few of their employees at the software business. Romney arrived at around 10:23 a.m. and left around 11 a.m.

Part of the meeting was open to the press, where the discussion focused upon uncertainties that make it difficult for businesses to expand.